Web Page Design: Implications of Memory, Structure and Scent
This paper describes "...an experiment to see if large breadth and decreased depth is preferable, both subjectively and via performance data, while attempting to design for optimal scent throughout different structures of a website. Results showed that, while increased depth did harm search performance on the web, a medium condition of depth and breadth outperformed the broadest, shallow web structure overall. (Sep-04-98)
The link address is: http://research.microsoft.com/%7Emarycz/p25-larson.pdf?0sr=a